My eyes have been changing for about 5 years. I shift reader prescriptions every six months or so. The process of getting old eyes has made me more aware of how that particular sensory input shapes our experience. I’ve spent more time thinking about hearing, as someone who has a respectable hearing loss.
Since I’ve needed readers, I’ve found myself misplacing my cheap glasses everywhere, doing that arms reach thing with nutrition tables and ingredient lists on food cartons, and enjoying what seems like better distance vision. I joked that perhaps this farsightedness was actually the source of wisdom in the elderly. The point being, what we sense shapes our reality. This is a huge part of the filtering aspect of monasticism. So, as a secular monastic hermit, how should I shape my perceptions?
I decided to pay homage to nature more honestly and astutely, I need better eyes. I ordered both a telescope and a microscope.
The microscope is here, and as soon as my spawn leaves from his holiday respite, I will be getting that out, I already had a decent dissection scope. My regular microscope was old, missing several objectives, and did not have any way to adapt a camera. Both the dissection scope and the regular scope have either integrated or cell phone adapters. The telescope does too, but that is not here yet. Hopefully for spring.
I would love to start painting again inspired by my observations of nature. I miss taking the time to look closely. I also finally feel secure enough in my interpretations of reality that I have confidence in my voice. I used to work as a sculptor, specializing on heads and faces. For some reason, maybe it’s my more developed sense of mortality, I am more interested in conveying fleeting realities with light and color, rather than immutable ideas that figurative sculpture is best used to portray.
